ADVERTISING

ADVERTISING; NEW TESTS IN RIVALRY FOR SLICE

By Philip H. Dougherty

Published: November 16, 1987

THE J. Walter Thompson Company and Batten, Barton, Durstine & Osborne made creative presentations to Pepsi-Cola U.S.A. for its Slice soft drink last Thursday and were sent back to the drawing boards, according to agency sources.

Each agency - J.W.T. is the incumbent - presented a number of concepts, and each was asked to do additional work on one of them. It could take until Thursday. However, it was said, if the apparently complicated logistics for one of the concepts can be figured out, a winner might well be named sooner.

B.B.D.O., part of BBDO Worldwide, a subsidiary of the Omnicom Group, is Pepsi-Cola's largest agency. And the client, Pepsico, has quite a few agencies worldwide.

An executive at one of them, who does not want his name used, said: ''Pepsi is one of the most terrific, demanding, frustrating and wonderful clients. It has incredibly high creative standards, and its people torture agencies but in a positive way. All they want is great work.''

The problem for Slice, a drink that contains some real fruit juice, would appear to be that it was so good and so popular that it inspired copiers, whose appearance has slowed the growth of the original.

And what growth it has been. Slice went into test market in Rochester and Tulsa, Okla., in June 1984, with the advertising theme ''We've got the juice.'' (The national introductory budget was estimated at $30 million.) The juice claim was one that could be made at that time by neither of Pepsi's prime competitors - Coca-Cola and Seven-Up.

But things have changed in a very short time and those formidable foes have introduced new brands or have reformulated others. And additional competitors have joined the fray. Royal Crown, for example, is reported to be bringing out a Nehi Froot brand.

By last year, according to Beverage Industry, a trade publication, Slice had moved handily into fourth place among the top 10 soft drinks with an 11.4 percent market share. It was behind Coca-Cola with 20.5 percent; Pepsi, 19.6, and Seven-Up, 11.9, but ahead of Sprite, 8.8.

So there was Slice, ending 1986 with more than 11 percent of the market when it had begun the year, according to one trade source, with a goal of only 10 percent.

Slice comes in a number of flavors, both regular and diet, including cherry, apple, lemon-lime and mandarin orange. Mandarin orange, introduced in January 1986, was the best-selling orange soda in America by last Dec. 31. And that was with distribution in only half the country.

According to Leading National Advertisers, an independent media-measuring service, most of the estimated $32 million that Pepsi-Cola put behind Slice last year was used in spot TV, and most of it was for the regular Slice rather than diet.

But radio, cable, billboards and newspapers were also used. The L.N.A. figures did not include newspapers or spot radio. It has been reported that Slice was backed by $2.4 million in newspapers in 1986.